Tech News October 2005

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The first impressions can be really summarized with only one word: huge. Being a previous owner of a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 (an excellent 19? CRT monitor which has served me well for the past three years, and continues to do so even now), I was accustomed to large monitors, but a 5 inch increase in real estate is something you are never really prepared for. Just to give you an analogy, imagine being used to working with a 14? monitor, only to jump to a 19? monitor after that. Yes, the difference is that big. Widescreen is something you also have to grow accustomed to; especially if you come from the CRT world (like most of us). Fortunately the transition is smooth ? as soon as your eyes get used to the enlarged size of the panel (as already stated, the monitor is huge), you will appreciate the extra desktop real-estate you will have; and all that, without having to resort to wearing glasses. At 1920×1200, everything is crisp, and fonts and icon sizes look normal.

“A couple of years ago I had to give up my dedicated computer room and move my systems into the sitting area by my front room. When things were in the old room, I didn’t mind the constant hum of my firewall or my main system; I could always turn the speakers up a bit to drown it all out. When it was all moved into close proximity to the TV, however, things began to change. The little Sun SPARC classic and its noisy power supply fan became too much to take and I had to trade it out with a typical DSL router. That made things quieter, but the main system with three 80mm fans was still grating on my ears.

It just so happens that Silentmaxx, producer of silent PC components, makes a hard drive enclosure that manages to cool your drive as well as make it quieter. QuietPC USA is the exclusive distributor of Silentmaxx products in North America and they were nice enough to send me the Silentmaxx HD-silencer for review. With its heatsink-ish exterior, this enclosure promises to keep your drive and your ears happy, but will it deliver?”

“At this point, I was already pretty impressed with the Copperhead, but the real shock came when I switched back to my old Logitech mouse. One word: WOW. Never before had I realized that my mouse was sooo freaking slow! The pointer was practically crawling across the screen; I wanted to reach in and drag it myself.”

Quote: “Intel’s current flagship chipset continues to be the 955X. Gigabyte has taken that chipset and made a wonderful board out of it. The GA-8I955X Royal provides great performance, great overclocking headroom, and has a big bundle of goodies.”

“Filling the system was a breeze. I poured the bottle of HydrX into a cleaned out 1 liter soda bottle, topping it off with distilled water. Next I filled the system through the reservoir as the instructions show. Adding a little water, then tipping the case back, I got a good amount of water in the tubing. After powering on the system some more fluid was immediately required as the pump should never be allowed to run dry. After tipping the case and adding more fluid a few times, the fluid level was just below the inside edge of the fill-hole. I then let the system run for a while allowing all of the bubbles to work their way out of the system, which also gave me time to sit and check for any leaks or seeps at the connections.”

“Innovatek is o­ne of the pioneers in the watercooling industry, being o­ne of the first companies that offered watercooling products for the PC enthusiasts. No wonder, like most of the oldest companies they are a company located in Germany, a country with somewhat of a ‘tradition’ o­n watercooling and a large market reflecting that. Innovatek has built the reputation of delivering top quality and silent products. Today we will take a look o­n a full watercooling kit, the Premium XXS, a simple and small but very effective kit for the average enthusiast. Let us see what Innovatek does to make their products differ from the masses.”

Title: Watch Out For GeCube Reviews on Other Websites
Hardware Secrets :: Monday, October 31, 2005
“You need to be very carefull when reading VGA reviews from GeCube on other websites. GeCube is sending out “fine tuned” boards to media, models that aren’t easily found on the market. In our case, we’ve got from them one Radeon X800 GTO running at 472 MHz for core and 1 GHz for memory, while the original specs for this board is 400 MHz for core and 1 GHz for memory. With this “fine tuning”, GeCube Radeon X800 GTO would be faster than a Radeon X800 Pro (475 MHz for core and 950 MHz for memory). The whole problem is that they didn’t tell us that the sample they sent us was overclocked. Officially, GeCube was selling this overclocked model in a “special limited quantity” offer, however this model is already sold out. Also, we couldn’t find any reference for the overclocked specs on the box, on the manual or on their website of this model we’ve got.”

Summary: “Symphony OS, among the latest Linux distributions receiving quite a bit of attention by the general public, has released their first BETA candidate (BETA 1 Preview 1) after a series of ALPHA releases. Rather than using GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, or another one of the many desktop environments Symphony OS has created the Mezzo Desktop Environment to allow for a visually attractive and easy-to-use interface. In addition, this Knoppix-based distribution packs a punch when it comes to its standard set of packages and user friendly features.”

Ultra Products is constantly coming up with new and exciting for us computer junkies whether it be fan controllers or computer memory they are always coming up with something new. Today we have the pleasure of reviewing the latest addition to the power supply line-up with the Ultra X-Finity 2nd Generation featuring Flex-Force Cabling.

We mention the cabling because at last there is finally a way to beautify you case with a little help from the power supply. To learn more about the Flex-Force cabling you will have to read the review.

One stumbling block Shuttle faces in marketing the SD11G5 is price. A search of online retailers shows it to retail at around the £340 mark. That’s a lot of wedge to pay for a motherboard, case (albeit a stylish one), and cooler. There’s also the lack of relative gaming performance from the onboard graphics. Playing any modern game is an absolute no-no, as far as we’re concerned. Shuttle, though, is aiming the SD11G5 at style gurus and those interested in an ultra-quiet, powerful machine. In that respect and if you can put up with the price, it succeeds well.

3 New Power Supplies: SinTek 500w SLI, Enermax Liberty 500w, Silverstone Strider 600w at 3DXtreme
3dXtreme :: Monday, October 31, 2005
A stable source of power is the heart of every working PC. Overclockers can appreciate a stable and sufficient Power Supply as this could be the ‘make it or break it’ component within their PC. As of late there is a growing sense of awareness within the industry of the importance of a high quality Power Supply and today 3DXtreme is taking a look at three new comers to the market. Dual Core Processors and SLI based PCs are upping the power requirements and the marketing departments are doing a good job getting this information to the consumer. Here are the Power Supply Units that arrived for review in the last two weeks and they will be pitted against one another.

Corsair 2GB TWINX PC4400 DDR550 Pro Series Memory @ BonaFideReviews
Bona Fide Reviews :: Monday, October 31, 2005
Quote: “After reviewing 1GB of Crucial’s PC3200 Ballistix memory and 1GB of OCZ’s Gold PC3200 memory we continue the trend of enthusiast RAM with 2GB of Corsair’s PC4400 TWINX Pro Series memory. The keyword here is enthusiast as the TWINX comes in a 2GB package with a speed rating of 275MHZ (DDR550). Perhaps not today, but certainly in the near future (6-12 months) having 2 gigabytes of memory in a computer will be the standard.”

OCZ PC4000 2GB EB Platinum Ed.
Overclockers Online :: Monday, October 31, 2005
Quote: Gone are the days when the best performance is provided by 1GB kits of memory. OCZ has given us an alternative that provides amazing performance, solid overclockability, and 2GBs of memory in the form of two 1GB modules running in dual channel at timings that are un-heard of anywhere else on the market. As you saw from the overclocking, this kit not only runs DDR500 @ 3-3-2-8 but it actually runs DDR500 @ 2.5-3-2-7 and 2-3-2-7 up to DDR450+!

Content: “Being one of the heaviest CPU coolers tested here, the Blue Orb II is unlike anything we have seen. Thermaltake made the Blue Orb II stand out from the crowd by adding blue LED fans to the cooler to match it with the blue aluminium fins on the heatsink. Although the heatsink was made of copper core and aluminium fins, the performance was slightly better than the full copper heatsink we compared it against. It runs pretty silent at 1700RPM and performs as advertised.”

Vapochill Micro Review @ Legit Reviews
Legit Reviews :: Monday, October 31, 2005
“I have to say that I found the Vapochill Micro to be an outstanding product. Not only did it obliterate the stock AMD cooling solution, but the temperatures produced by the Extreme and High End models were on par with both water cooling kits I use on my system, at least at stock speeds… ”

Quote: “Feeling Well, Today I have another review for an Xgbox product, the last few reviews I did of Xgbox products were power supplies, today I will be taking a look at one of their new entry level PC Cases, the Ninja 2. Xgbox has gotten some great scores from ThinkComputers in the past for their great products; will the Ninja 2 keep up with this tradition? The Ninja 2 is inexpensive, considered an entry level gaming case, but it has many features of the more expensive cases out there. Xgbox has a great reputation so far for their great products, and I have to say from my first impression, the Ninja 2 looks to keep that reputation.”

Quote: Imagine a world of good and evil: With the power to choose your own place between the two. If you like to bring the devil out in you, or be a little good boy, or maybe a little bit of both. Then this game is definitely one for you.